It is rare for a week to go by without something shameful happening on the EU’s southern borders. It might be news of a rickety boat left floating in the Maltese search-and-rescue zone, eventually picked up with half its occupants dead from dehydration. Or it might be a United Nations report confirming that asylum-seekers were among those picked up by the Italian coastguard and handed over to the Libyan authorities, to be sent to a detention centre without recourse to justice. Or it might be a non-governmental organisation report that children in a Greek detention centre are on hunger strike to protest against appalling conditions.

Such events place question-marks over the human-rights record of the countries involved, but they also raise doubts about respect across the EU for the asylum laws and conventions to which member states have signed up.

The response of member states – or, rather, the lack of response – adds to the doubts. While the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Council of Europe have condemned these and similar events, other EU member states have largely remained silent. Successive presidencies of the EU have passed responsibility to European Commission officials tasked with enforcing directives.

The reason for this silence is simple: all EU states back the get-tough policy on immigration. In the case of Italy, officials from other states privately point to the success of the ‘push-backs’ to Libya and the drop in the number of boats now making the voyage across the Mediterranean. ‘Tiny’ Malta always gets a sympathetic ear, while Greece’s woes are tolerated with a ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ attitude. Other capitals avoid criticising Athens for fear of being held to account if they ever transgress.

But there is more at issue than the EU’s toleration of what is going on at Europe’s southern borders. Italy, Malta and Greece may be in the spotlight, but other EU states are working to limit improvements in the asylum system.

Last December, the Commission proposed revisions to asylum laws that went some way to addressing problems in the current system and raising standards. Its proposed revision of the reception conditions law would give asylum-seekers access to legal aid and the right to seek work six months after filing an asylum request. Minors and those with special needs would be given specific protection. Detention would be banned for minors and only allowed in restricted circumstances for anyone else. This would vastly improve the situation in Malta, for example, where asylum-seekers are automatically locked up.

A revision of the Dublin Convention, which requires asylum-seekers to be sent back to the member state where they first made their application, would allow applicants the right to have their transfer halted while they launch an appeal against the decision. The revised law would also allow member states, at their own request or at the Commission’s, to have transfers suspended if their system was coming under particular strain.

Both proposals are being discussed by member states, but little progress is being made. Member states are opposing restrictions on how they control their systems. There is a general fear that any raising of standards, such as those allowing earlier attempts to find work, would encourage more asylum-seekers.

Yesterday (21 October) the Commission proposed two more revisions of asylum law, concerning the rules on who is entitled to refugee status and how member states make that decision. Campaigners expect these proposals to become bogged down as member states fight to water them down.

The Commission is not without fault either. Amid the debate about sending asylum-seekers back to Libya and their treatment there, Jacques Barrot, the commissioner for justice, freedom and security, said he wants to see the UNHCR office in Tripoli process asylum-seekers who want to reach Europe. “Currently an asylum-seeker is often obliged to go via traffickers to reach the EU coast to get the application considered,” Barrot said in September. “Together with the UNHCR we hope we can gradually find the answers to these challenges.”

The UNHCR fails to see how that could happen since Libya does not have a functioning asylum system. As for human-rights campaigners, they say it would amount to the EU externalising its responsibilities.

The EU’s member states signed up to creating a ‘Common European Asylum System’ by 2010 and, since that is no where near in place, have pushed it back to 2012. But what kind of asylum system will be created if the constant focus is on the ‘race to the bottom’? EU states may fear creating a model asylum system, for fear of attracting more migrants to Europe, but the consequences of the current system will be even more shameful if standards are not raised.

Designing a common European asylum system should not only be about making all states the same so that no one state is more attractive to asylum-seekers than another. It should ultimately be about Europe living up to its commitments to protect people fleeing persecution.

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